Jaded Allure
by xwildxdreamer
Summary: When the spell of a witch backfires, Buffy is not only brought back from the dead but thrust into a future not her own. Trapped in the body of her seventeen-year-old self, Buffy must find out what happened to her while navigating a new world where vampires are public and nothing like the ones she was used too. Will Godric find a way to survive the world or does he still want to mee
1. Changes To Your World

**Welcome everyone to my first Buffy the Vampire Slayer and TrueBlood crossover. I honestly don't know where this idea came to me. It was just something that showed up in my head. I would like to give a thank you to everyone who stepped up and helped me work on this story. I do also want to dedicate it to my friend Kelsey. I hope you enjoy sweetie.**

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Sunnydale California, Circa 2001

She knows that this is the end of the line. The strongest and oldest of any of the slayers, to date, ever. Her world should have ended a long time ago, but she was lucky. Fortunate to have people around her that seemed to help her change the world. Now was her time. Her time to sacrifice herself and find that peace that she so desperately craved.

Her friends had never understood what it was like for her. They were not thrust into this sacred duty as she was. Expected to go out every night of her life and fight vampires, demons, and other dark forces. It was always her hope that she would be able to return every night. To go back to her bed before her mother had been any wiser. She had died once already, drowned and came back. Even that was not enough to free her from this obligation. It just made her the older Slayer, the 'best' slayer.

So standing up here, watching the world slowly start to slip into chaos, Buffy knew her options. While Dawn might not be her real sister, she was a part of her. Made whole from her very essence and given form. That was enough to feel like the young woman was her baby sister. If dying now meant that Dawn could live, Buffy would do it a thousand times over. Sacrificing herself in the grand scheme of things had accomplished nothing.

It was why she had plunged off the edge of the scaffolding and into the lightning and void. Her blood would seal the portal, and the world would survive. Her world would survive. She had thought.

What she had not expected was that when she took the plunge to hear Willow's voice in the form of a chant. Something was not right. Willow was not exactly the best when it came to magical control, and they all knew that. Most of her life had spent trying to be perfect in every way, and now they all were going to pay the consequences of it.

Before death took her, Buffy heard one final word. Survive.

That was before the darkness had taken over her, and she had awoken to the world she never expected. When you lived your life in darkness, trying to thwart the powers that wanted to make the world hateful and painful, waking up to the sunshine was not what she was used to. Neither was knowing that she was in some form of heaven for a little while.

Up here, Buffy could see her friends and watch them, and she knew that Willow was plotting something. She just did not know what. There was no way she could get down there and say anything either. She was dead. She had sacrificed herself to save the world as was the duty of all the Slayers before and after her. She did not feel finished in her duty as a Slayer.

The Powers That Be, annoying as they were, let her understand that something was coming that was going to change both her world and the worlds around her.

Buffy was not stupid enough to know that her reality was the only one. There were multiple realities all running parallel to each other. Dimensions, worlds. You name it. She was aware of it all, due to her studies with her watcher, Giles and through her knowledge of the world.

It was why she was trying to keep an eye on Willow. If the Wicca didn't be careful, she could rip the very fabric of time apart and create damage that had such a massive lingering effect. Then again, Buffy sort of wanted to see what would happen.

When she had died, she was twenty years old. Had lived much longer than most slayers ever had. They were considered fortunate to make it past their first year, many dying young at sixteen. Instead, she'd been one of the rare few that made it to eighteen and through the Cruciamentum. Now she was dead as one of the oldest and with that came the knowledge of past slayers.

She didn't know how many months she was up here or how many times she had to have someone explain to her that she would not be dead for much longer. It was annoying, honestly.

What she did know was that Willow Rosenburg was meddling in magics that she should not have, and she was using Spike as her test dummy. After all, you can't hurt one of the undead can you? It was a stupid notion. Spike might have questionable morals and loyalties but using him like this was so very wrong.

In a way, Buffy wished that she knew what the witch was up too. Maybe she could have been prepared but she was not. Maybe that was why the pain took her by surprise.

When you fought for your life pain was not something that was a foreign concept but this pain was different. It was as if every tiny fiber of her body was exploding into a thousand tiny pieces. She could not fight the screams that tore through her as she had reawoken in the land of the living from the realm of heaven and forced back into a body. The problem? It was not her body as she had left it, and this was not her world.

This world was something else.

It had taken ten long minutes before her pain subsided enough that she could even open her eyes. Hazel eyes looked around at the surroundings. Where was she? Coughing a moment as air forced its way into her lungs Buffy had tried to get her mind to rights.

Wherever she was, it did not look like the paradise she had been in before. It was a city with high rise buildings and the slightly less than the crisp air of a suburban town. She'd spent plenty of time in Los Angeles to know what a city smelled like, especially the air.

Once her eyes were open, Buffy tried to move but her body did not want to cooperate at the moment. Instead, she laid there breathing in and out and trying to remember what happened. The pain was lingering, but it was more localized now.

Having no idea how long she laid there, Buffy was finally able to move. The first thing she did was make sure that she had something to cover her body. Getting arrested for being naked was not something she wanted to do. Thankfully, she was clothed.

Slowly moving into a seated position, Buffy ran a hand through her hair with a sigh. Where the hell was she? What happened? What did Willow do?

So many more questions ran through her mind. Her first order of business was to assess where she was and then figure out what happened. Magic was odd and could cause ripples with unforeseen consequences. It was the very thing she tried to get the redhead to understand for so long. Magic was dangerous.

Finally able to stand, Buffy looked around at the city. It was not one that she had been in before. She could only assume it was still the year 2000, or that had been the hope until she heard the sound of a television around the corner.

Slowly she had made her way to the storefront, staring at the window as it listed the date. The year was what shocked her. 2009. Was she nine years in the future? Was this even possible? It seemed at first to be a joke, some dream until she saw the actual news feed.

Were vampires public? There were laws and regulations? All of this was confounding her. Where the hell was she? Turning her head to stare at the street she caught sight of one that said, Dallas.

At least she was still in the States. Dallas. 2009. In the world where vampires were public and, the world didn't seem to care. For the most part nevertheless. Buffy was not stupid enough to believe that there would not be haters.

Catching a glance at herself in the reflection of the window, Buffy paused a moment. What the hell was this nonsense? She looked seventeen again. She had been twenty when she had died. Why was she alive again as seventeen? It was crazy as hell.

She looked dirty, and she probably was, covered in dirt and grime and she looked rather horrid. It was something she knew she needed to rectify. Partly due to the knowledge she had of when she ran away from home that first time. When she lived in Los Angeles for those months after killing the man she had loved.

Was this a chance to start over again? Right now, she needed to figure out what she was going to do. Shower and a change of clothes for sure. She could get those at a shelter if they had any. A job would be the first thing that was going to matter. Finding a job would at least help her get on her feet until she could figure out what was going to happen.

Having no idea where anything was in Dallas, Buffy did not know where to go. Instead, all she could do was walk up and down the street and hope that something stuck in her head. Thankfully only about two blocks from where she woke was a temp agency. At least that was what the sign said.

Buffy generally wouldn't have tried something like this, but she was desperate. Right now she needed help, and she got it. The manager took pity on her. It was closing time and would be dark soon enough. Buffy was able to shower and dress in some spare clothes that they had in the business before the woman talked to her about job offers.

If Buffy was willing to take it, they had a job that she could start working on tomorrow. The question would be where she would stay that night. Diana, thankfully, had a guest room she could stay in. There was something about Buffy that drew her in. The blonde was not going to look the kind gesture in the mouth. It was not like the last time.

Buffy had taken the offer but only because she wanted to sleep. That night she would need to go to bed and then when she woke to figure out her next move. It was going to be something she had to figure out. Why was she here, so far in the future, so far different than when she had been alive. Why did she wake up in this time, in this body at this age, with such an odd life with vampires.


	2. Wake Me Up When September Ends

Darkness was never something she had ever been afraid of, ever. Her world revolved around darkness and the creatures that roamed within. In fact, she was more than certain if her world suddenly crashed around her she would truly be good and dead. Not that she hadn't been before. What annoyed her was the fact that was once again seventeen years old. Why would anyone be this cruel?

Had she not already lived through this? Had she not already moved past this year of her life even though it was traumatic and painful. There was a rather large part of her that felt as if The Powers That Be hated her with every ounce of their essence. They must since they allowed this to happen.

Did they understand that she had her memories of being twenty-one before all of this went down? Of everything she had left behind when she had sacrificed herself, and here she was, seventeen again. It was like waking up and suddenly being part of a very horrible movie. Like that one about the day that repeats until they get it perfect. What was it called?

It didn't matter. She didn't honestly care enough. No, she was lost and confused and had no idea where she was. The last thing that the blonde remembered was sacrificing herself to save Dawn. Her little sister who was not even really her sister. Of jumping off that ledge to seal the gate to the hell dimension. Of doing her sacred duty as a Slayer, as The Slayer.

She knew how she got to this building or even down in this cell, but she didn't know how she had ended up back at this age, so far back in time. For one long awful moment, Buffy was quite sure that she was in hell. Maybe that was where she belonged for loving a vampire, even one as evil as Angel had been. It hadn't stopped her from doing her job, though, or the sacred duty. She'd moved on, past the one who spent most of his time sulking and wallowing in guilt and self-doubt. She had thought she had moved on at least.

So why was she allowing the old wounds to fester? Why was she thinking about that life when she could be thinking of a way to get out of this situation? It was something that had her baffled. Out of all of the places and times to wake up in this was not one of them.

It was only three weeks ago that Buffy had returned to the land of the living. Three weeks since she'd woken up seventeen in a dingy back alley in Dallas. Three weeks to realize that she was in the future, or rather a future other than her own. If she were back in her timeline, she should have been twenty-seven. Not seventeen. She should have been in Rome, not Dallas Texas. In truth, she had hoped never to come back to the states.

There she had been, waking up in the dingy alley with no recollection of how she had gotten there. Thankfully she had to something on, but it wasn't much. It covered all the necessary bits, but they remained concealed in dirt and grime and only made her look horrible. Her mind had quickly focused so that she could figure out where she was when something caught her ear. It was a commercial.

Moving from the alley and towards the street proper, Buffy allowed her hearing to zero in on the source. Playing in one of the windows of a convenience store was a commercial for True Blood. It made her start and wondered what the hell was going on. Why would there be an ad for a drink that allows vampires to feed without taking human blood? Everyone knew that vampires could only survive on human blood, honestly. It was stupid to believe otherwise. Then again, most humans did not even believe in vampires.

It was only after the commercial that her jaw dropped even more. There, on the screen was a newscaster talking to someone who was the Vampire Representative. Buffy managed to pick up on something odd. This world knew about vampires, and from what she could gather, they were very public. True they had haters but this was new. Why would she be put in this situation? Why was she in the world where she could very easily hold herself accountable for crimes against vampires if she did her 'sacred' duty? Maybe this was her chance to have finally the ordinary life she had worked for with her duty.

Here was the world where vampires were public and seemed to have rights. Such a strange thing. Maybe she was in hell. Was Dallas hell? Maybe not. Shaking her head a moment, Buffy had looked around her surroundings then and realized that she needed to do something.

The money would be her first option. She would need to work, that much she had known. At her age, without any identification she had to be careful. To most people, she looked like a runaway, and maybe that was what she could classify herself as. Her mother was dead, and she was quite sure that if she tried to find them; her so-called friends would be non-existent too. Maybe this was what she needed after all.

After that day, she had managed to find work doing odd and end jobs for a cleaning service. While it might not have been perfect by most standards, it was a job, and they paid her in cash, and they did not dig to find out more about her life. It was fine, for about three weeks, until she had been assigned to do clean up at the Fellowship of the Sun church. Buffy hated religious people, most of them were zealots but the lot of them, well they were just mindless zombies to whatever indoctrination they had been forced to live through.

Her first day at the compound that they called a church and she wanted to run away screaming. She had been cleaning when they had brought in what appeared to be a dead body. At first glance, Buffy thought that it was someone that they were going to be having a funeral for until she saw them heading to the basement. The one place the whackjob Steven Newlin had told her was off limits.

When would people learn? You tell her something was off limits, and she went in regardless. Why would they want to store a dead body down in the basement?

In all honesty, she should have expected that she was getting herself into trouble. For the first time, Buffy's sixth sense had not gone off about vampires. Maybe that was because these vampires were different than the ones back in her other world. She did not know but when she got into the basement area it was clear that they had a vampire. Why else would they have silver bars?

Regardless of who the person was, she hated prejudice. One thing that the slayer had learned was that not all vampires were evil. Some were twisted and downright nasty but others, they were dealing with the lot handed to them in life and trying to make the best of it. She had never actually believed the whole no soul thing. It was just easier to believe in the false words and nod her head than start an argument and risk having herself turned over to the Council for 'review.'

Instead, she had just held her tongue and her thoughts. It was her curiosity that had caused her the trouble she now woke inside herself. She had been examining the body when she heard voices and too quickly they were on her before she could hide. The attack that came from behind and hit her in the head stunned her even more.

When she had awoken, Buffy was disoriented at first as her senses tried to right themselves. She may be the slayer, but she could still be taken out with a well-placed blow to her head. Now she was in a cage, the same silver cage she had found the vampire in, her hazel eyes were staring at the only other occupant of the room.

He was a vampire, but he was very pale. She might not know anything about this version of vampires, but even Buffy could tell that he was not healthy. Why was he here? There was this aura about him that spoke of age and sadness. Maybe she could find a way to break him out of it?

Groaning as she moved to sit up, Buffy frowned. She did not like being in such confined spaces. Taking a moment to take stock of the area she knew that they could escape. Her only concern was if he wanted too.

Vampires of a certain age were easy enough to understand. Still he was quiet, sitting Indian style on the floor as if he had been prepared for this. For his death. Oh no, she would not, could not allow that.

"You shouldn't have tried to find out who I was, little one."

The soft lilt in his voice struck a chord.

Turning her head to wipe away the tear from the sudden memory, Buffy wondered why he was calling her little one. Based on physical appearance alone he was no more than sixteen maybe seventeen years old. She knew she looked seventeen. There was the weight of age in his voice that had her feeling as if he was far older than the eldest vampire she had fought.

"I've not been known for thinking smart. It's not in my nature or my duty. Besides, no vampire should suffer. Now. Do you want to get out of here, or do you want to sit around and mope?"

There was strength in her voice but not kindness. She was firm and absolute. Buffy would get them out of there.

"Tell me, little one, how do you plan to get us out of here? We are in a cage, more than likely made out of silver. While I might be able to break the bars for a short while I risk damage should I try."

Huffing and muttering under her breath about the typical male chauvinistic views, Buffy stood up and dusted her hands off as if to wipe off dirt or debris. She had no idea if the vampire could hear her or not and honestly she didn't care. She was not some weak little child.

Moving to the bars on the cage, Buffy took a moment to study them. She was trying to ascertain how many of them she would need to manipulate before they both could be free.

With a soft grunt, she started to apply pressure to the bars. When she was seventeen the first time she did not have this strength. It was as if they had allowed her to keep the strength that made her the Elder Slayer and yet packed it in such a small body.

The bars bent, and she was quite satisfied with the hole she had made. Turning around, and quirking a brow at the vampire Buffy merely made a gesture that signaled that he should go first.

For a moment, it appeared as if the vampire was not going to move, but then she watched him stand gracefully and speed out of the hole, stopping just past it to wait on her. The silver did not touch him at all.

Stepping out of the cage, Buffy smiled at the vampire. He was roughly her height, so she didn't feel as if he was towering over her like so many other people did.

"Come, little one, we must talk about this but now is not safe. Take my hand, I will get us out of here without them being any the wiser."

She did not even know the vampire's name, but there was something about him that made her comply. Taking his hand, Buffy felt herself pulled along as he ran at super speed finding a way out of the church and launching himself into the air. The weightless feeling was one she had never experienced before.

In all her years of being a slayer, she had never encountered one that could fly. In truth, it made her a whole lot nervous. If they could fly there was grave concern that she would be strong enough to do her duty. She'd barely survived taking on Angelus, and he was well past two centuries old. One of the oldest she'd ever faced, outside of the Master. Henrich had been a challenge, and it was obvious to her that this vampire was even older than Heinrich Nest had ever been.

She should have been paying attention to the path they were taking, but she could not focus. She was flying like she was Wendy, and he was her Peter Pan, taking her off to Neverland.

When they landed outside of a home on the nicer side of town, Buffy shook her thoughts off for a moment. It was not what she had expected. The vampires she was used too lived in abandoned mansions or decrepit mausoleums. Not in luxurious houses that looked well maintained on the outside and probably full of priceless artifacts on the inside.

Feeling the tug on her hand, Buffy allowed the vampire to walk her through the gate and into the house. The warmth of the home was so unlike what she was used to from her former encounters with vampires. They didn't need a fireplace to make the house warm; you could feel the warmth the moment you walked in.

Buffy and her vampire companion had been quiet the entire time. Godric had stopped just outside one of the doors and knocked before moving on. It was a signal that he was back. He could feel Eric in his nest and knew that he needed to let his child know he was there.

It had not been voluntary, his dealings with the FOTS, but that did not stop him from feeling like his world existed but held no value anymore. At least, until he met the blonde. Something about her called to him on a level that he did not quite understand. It was clear she knew he was a vampire, and yet she acted as if he was not a vampire she was used to. Then she had bent the bars, created a hole large enough to get through and waited for him.

Godric had no idea what she was. She smelt human, to a point, but then she didn't feel human at all. He did not feel as if she was a threat, so hiding from her was not what he intended to do.

Knocking twice on the room that was his Eric's when the Viking visited, Godric pushed open the door. He could see his child sitting, staring out the window. Godric smiled fondly at his progeny before opening the bond and watching the VIking's head swivel around and fall to his knees.

"Master."

"How many times must I tell you, my son, you do not need to address me as such?"

"Maybe one more time master."

The chuckle that rose through Godric was enough to make Eric smile as he rose and hugged his maker close to him for a moment before he turned his arctic blue eyes upon the blonde.

He was not stupid enough to say anything, yet. There was something about the woman that made him take pause. She seemed like a predator, but he did not feel as if he was prey. He was unsure if he could stop her. While she looked tiny, she had an aura of power about her.

"Eric, this young woman will be staying with us for a while. We have much to discuss, but dawn is fast approaching. I wanted to let you know that I was here, home, for now. Rest my son and we will discuss things upon awakening."

With that Godric left the room and headed for another room. He did not even know the young woman's name, but that mattered not at the moment. She was here, and she would be safe and he needed to rest.

"Little One, this is a guest room. You may stay here as long as you like. My name is Godric, and the tall blonde is my child, Eric Northman. We have things that we must discuss with you tomorrow upon our awakening. Will you still be here?"

Taking a breath and trying to decide Buffy nodded.

"Yes. I have nowhere else to go. My name is Buffy Summers. It's a pleasure to meet you Godric."

With that said she kissed him gently on the cheek and moved into the room he was standing in front of so that she could go to bed. When the door closed behind her, she let out a breath as she got ready to go to sleep.

Being the Slayer meant that Buffy frequently spent most of her nights awake and her days too. She had normally functioned by running on maybe four hours of sleep if that. It might be nice actually to get a full rest.

Godric waited until he heard the sounds of her breathing even out in sleep before he allowed himself to go to rest. He would protect the little ball of fire that had freed him from his cage. Both the mental and physical cage that he had been inside.

Up until this point, he had been ready to greet the sun. Now he wanted to know as much about the odd little spitfire of a blonde and keep her by his side. It was going to be an interesting turn of events.


End file.
